Aids-related deaths in South Africa: 1 808 148 at noon on June 7 2006
Major funding has been earmarked to find faster-acting tuberculosis (TB) drugs that do not clash with anti-retroviral medications.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is providing $104-million for the research, according to an announcement made by the TB Alliance, a public-private partnership that will undertake the work.
The money will accelerate the development of nearly a dozen potential drugs, with the long-term goal of treating the disease with just 10 doses. Current TB drugs were developed more than 40 years ago, involve about 130 doses and take at least six months to work.
While TB is the leading cause of death for people with HIV/Aids, standard TB and HIV drugs cannot be combined easily at present.
‘A package of powerful new drugs will mean we can treat more people better — including those co-infected with HIV and those suffering multi-drug resistant forms of the disease,” says Maria Freire, CEO and president of the TB Alliance.
Multi-drug resistant forms of the TB bacterium are more likely to emerge if patients do not complete their treatment or if their drug supply is interrupted.
‘New treatments could free patients from the gruelling six-month regimen and ultimately save millions of lives,” says Peter Small, senior programme officer at the Gates Foundation.
Source: SciDev.Net